
The Stained Glass Window
A Family History as the American Story, 1790-1958
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Dion Graham
About this listen
“At once narrative history, family chronicle and personal memoir… [a] luminous work of investigation and introspection.”—Wall Street Journal
National Humanities Medal recipient and two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize David Levering Lewis’s own family history that shifts our understanding of the larger American story
Sitting beneath a stained glass window dedicated to his grandmother in the Atlanta church where his family had prayed for generations, preeminent American historian David Levering Lewis was struck by the great lacunae in what he could know about his own ancestors. He vowed to excavate their past and tell their story.
There is no singular American story. Yet the Lewis family contains many defining ones. David Levering Lewis’s lineage leads him to the Kings and Belvinses, two white slaveholding families in Georgia; to the Bells, a free persons of color slaveholding family in South Carolina; and to the Lewises, an up-from-slavery black family in Georgia.
Lewis’s father, John Henry Lewis Sr., set Lewis on the path he pursues, introducing him to W. E. B. Du Bois and living by example as Thurgood Marshall’s collaborator in a key civil rights case in Little Rock. In The Stained Glass Window, Lewis reckons with his legacy in full, facing his ancestors and all that was lost, all the doors that were closed to them.
In this country, the bonds of kinship and the horrific fetters of slavery are bound up together. The fight for equity, the loud echoes of the antebellum period in our present, and narratives of exceptionalism are ever with us; in this book, so, too, are the voices of Clarissa, Isaac, Hattie, Alice, and John. They shaped this nation, and their heir David Levering Lewis's chronicle of the antebellum project and the subsequent era of marginalization and resistance will transform our understanding of it.
©2025 David Levering Lewis (P)2025 Penguin AudioCritic reviews
“[A] personal road map gave [Lewis] a framework for telling the story of African Americans of all social classes and skin tones, from pre-Colonial times to the 1950s . . . In many ways it’s a brutal account—the terrors of slavery, the violence and injustice of Reconstruction, the post-Reconstruction throttling of Black rights and opportunities that caused many of Lewis’ ancestors to flee the South. It’s also a story of immense courage, grit, and determination . . . The Stained Glass Window is a major accomplishment in its reach and scope and reconnection with the past. Perhaps only an 88-year-old two-time Pulitzer winner could have brought the necessary skills and perspective to the task. If Lewis felt that he owed a debt to his family in writing this book, consider that debt repaid—with interest.”—Los Angeles Times
“The Stained Glass Window is at once narrative history, family chronicle and personal memoir… A parade of Mr. Lewis’s relatives . . . march through his book and provide a vivid picture of the hard and heartbreaking challenges of black life in the U.S . . . But mostly there is Mr. Lewis himself—an indefatigable scholar, a double Pulitzer winner (for each of the Du Bois volumes), and a volunteer combatant in the war for historical racial justice. In a book in which he mined documents he also mined his own memory . . . The Chinese proverb has it that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. In this luminous work of investigation and introspection, a journey of more than 300 pages begins with a single glimpse of a church window.”—David M. Shribman, The Wall Street Journal
“Intricate, sumptuously written . . . An exquisite stylist and wide-ranging intellect . . . [The Stained Glass Window] is a scintillating and piercing study of how the Black upper class emerged from a fraught system in which violence, family, and inheritance were intertwined.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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A Great Disorder
- National Myth and the Battle for America
- By: Richard Slotkin
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 20 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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A Great Disorder is a bold, urgent work that helps us make sense of today's culture wars through a brilliant reconsideration of America's foundational myths and their use in contemporary politics. Richard Slotkin identifies five myths, born of different eras, that have shaped our conception of what it means to be American: the myths of the Frontier, the Founding, the Civil War (which he breaks into two opposing camps, Emancipation and the Lost Cause), and the Good War, embodied by the multiethnic platoon fighting for freedom.
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Opinion masquerading as history
- By bob bishop on 02-19-25
By: Richard Slotkin
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Borgata
- Clash of Titans: A History of the American Mafia
- By: Louis Ferrante
- Narrated by: Louis Ferrante
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The first serious external threat to the mafia's existence in America comes from U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who repeatedly expresses his desire to eradicate organized crime in America. Kennedy unleashes the full force of the U.S. Justice Department to the apparent dismay of long-time FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The mafia's unforgiving response is executed by Louisiana don Carlos Marcello along with Florida don Santo Trafficante, who together take aim at the attorney general's brother, the president of the United States.
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Excellent!
- By H.Potter on 03-07-25
By: Louis Ferrante
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Waste Land
- A World in Permanent Crisis
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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We are entering a new era of global cataclysm in which the world faces a deadly mix of war, climate change, great power rivalry, rapid technological advancement, the end of both monarchy and empire, and countless other dangers. In Waste Land, Robert D. Kaplan, geopolitical expert and author of more than twenty books on world affairs, incisively explains how we got here and where we are going.
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Climate / Population Alarmism in a Mask
- By ElovesK on 02-07-25
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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A Rage to Conquer
- Twelve Battles That Changed the Course of Western History
- By: Michael Walsh
- Narrated by: Michael Walsh
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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A sequel to Michael Walsh’s Last Stands, his new book A Rage to Conquer is a journey through the twelve of the most important battles in Western history. As Walsh sees it, war is an important facet of every culture—and, for better or worse, our world is unthinkable without it. War has been an essential part of the human condition throughout history, the principal agent of societal change, waged by men on behalf of, and in pursuit of, their gods, women, riches, power, and the sheer joy of combat.
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Not just a Review of 12 Battles
- By David A on 02-03-25
By: Michael Walsh
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How to Share an Egg
- A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty
- By: Bonny Reichert
- Narrated by: Bonny Reichert
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Bonny Reichert avoided everything to do with the Holocaust until she found herself, in midlife, suddenly typing those words into an article she was writing. The journalist had grown up hearing stories about her father’s near-starvation and ultimate survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she never imagined she would be able to face this epic legacy head-on. Then a chance encounter with a perfect bowl of borscht in Warsaw set Bonny on a journey to unearth her culinary lineage, and she began to dig for the roots of her food obsession, dish by dish.
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The author’s father’s story is interesting. Her story is not.
- By Amazon Customer on 02-26-25
By: Bonny Reichert
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President McKinley
- Architect of the American Century
- By: Robert W. Merry
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 19 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Republican President William McKinley transformed America during his two terms as president. Although he does not register large in either public memory or in historians' rankings, in this revealing account, Robert W. Merry offers "a fresh twist on the old tale . . . a valuable education on where America has been and, possibly, where it is going" (The National Review).
By: Robert W. Merry